One skein at a time: Dagmar Beinenz-Byrd turned hand dyeing yarn into a thriving venture

Silky skeins of merino wool dangle from a drying rack outside the sun-soaked studio.

They say turn your passion into your profession.

So Albuquerque artist Dagmar Beinenz-Byrd founded ZiaWoolz, a hand-dyed yarn company with herself as the dyer.

One skein at a time: Dagmar Beinenz-Byrd turned hand dyeing yarn into a thriving venture

Beinenz-Byrd had been a social worker in Maryland before she moved to Albuquerque 17 years ago. By the time her two children were independent, she was looking more to do.

She was raised in Germany by a family of women, where creating useful things from yarn and fabric was part of daily life.

She began spinning her own yarn and knitting garments in her early 20s and never stopped.

“I never took lessons,” Beinenz-Byrd said. “I got into dyeing through the back door.”

“In Germany, you learn how to knit in school,” she added.

She started dyeing with the aid of a Crock-Pot and Kool-Aid.

She spun the fibers into yarn and knitted sweaters for her children. After those first skeins, there was no turning back.

That talent practiced in the artist’s home kitchen led to the building of a dye studio in her garage, where she now works to create multicolored yarn, one skein at a time.

A glimpse of Beinenz-Byrd’s studio reveals a whiteboard scribbled with potential colorway names such as “Colorado Cowgirl” and “Burlesqueme,” as yarn simmers in dye on the stove beneath it.

She sold the results at her first craft show in Bosque Farms. People liked the yarn enough to buy it.

Bottles of powdered dye line shelves above her counter like spices.

“The yarn should be presoaked, then it goes into the pan for dyeing,” Beinenz-Byrd explained, moving long skeins of merino/cashmere/silk in place with a stick. “I don’t go by color theory. I dye by guts.”

She writes every “recipe” down on index cards, reserving three stars for her favorites. The cards help her when customers call asking for a favorite colorway that is sold out.

The process begins as she blends an aqua blue dye with water in a reused yogurt cup before pouring it into the warming pan.

“The beauty of it is if you don’t like it, you can just over dye it,” she said.

She checks to make sure the yarn has absorbed the blue dye before repeating the process with purple pigment. The result is a waving wash of the two colors. Next, she embellishes it with speckles. She shakes powdered tobacco-colored dye across the center of the skeins like salt.

“You don’t want the dyes to hit and disperse immediately,” Beinenz-Byrd said.

A multicolored shawl and a sky blue shrug hang from her living room vigas with a sweeping postcard view of her garden and the Sandia Mountains.

Today, Beinenz-Byrd sells her yarn online, at The Yarn Store in Nob Hill and at various knitting retreats, including one at Ghost Ranch and another in Winslow, Arizona.

“I love to talk to the people who knit with my yarn,” she said.

She knits her own garments at night.

“I have eight shawls right now in progress,” she said. “I love feeling the yarns, feeling the fibers. I also love creating something with my hands.”

People often ask her if she misses Germany. She doesn’t.

“New Mexico is really my happy place,” she said. “We immediately made wonderful friends. I’m in a circle of knitters and friends.”

A knitted child’s toy resembling a clown hangs from the ceiling in the middle of her studio.

“It’s called ‘kasperle,’ the jester,” she said. “He was one of my early mistakes,” she added with a giggle.